Sorry, no charts

People sure are getting their panties in a bunch about the potential cost of healthcare. You see them, mostly Republicans, all over the TV these days bitching and droning on about how much $1 trillion is? We are presented with all these arbitrary descriptions of what one trillion dollars would look like. For example, if one trillion in dimes were laid out end to end, the line would stretch around Rush Limbaugh’s head 12 times! Do these childlike charts define one trillion dollars to us any better than $1,000,000,000,000? Perhaps to simple minds, but for most, I think, that number perfectly conveys its size. We get it. It’s big.

You know what’s also a big number? 3 x 1,000,000,000,000. That’s 3,000,000,000,000. This is also known as the cost of war in Iraq. This isn’t a secret. It has been researched by and written about many news organizations. You can read about the cost of the Iraq War here, here, and here.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather spend a trillion on healthcare than three trillion on a war we should have never been fighting in the first place. However, a lot of people feel differently. They would rather keep the only superpower in the world from having some sort of nationalized healthcare option than spend some time getting pissed off about how we were duped into a war that is costing three times as much as this healthcare plan.